I am also a bio student and I attended a seminar in nanotech and cancer. There is research being done where nano devices seek out and destroy cancer cells. Much of this research has been progressed due to DNA sequencing technologies. Exciting times indeed
Are you Chem major or Bio, I know they have both in the biochem field?
Of course the major problem is that just as with any other system for targetting cancer, the nanobots may have difficulty determining whether a cell has been affected by cancer or not: the bots may leave malignant growths untouched or worse, destroy healthy cells. It would most likely essentially supplement the body's natural killer cells.
There are obviously many other problems associated with nanotech as well: the powerpoint presentation you linked to notes that heavy metals will be a major component of nanobots, which are of course toxic to humans; and if they are designed to self replicate, where will the supply of necessary materials come from, how will they know when to stop multiplying without being able to communicate with each other, how will they prevent the body's vital nutrients being used by the nanobots and essentially starving the host?
Then there's the problem of making the bots able to pass through plasma membranes when required in order to reach the desired tissues.
There's also the problem of preventing damage by the immune system or due to substances which may or may not be in the blood. If a nanobot receives oxidative damage by being phagocytosed (or simply by 'wandering' into a lysosome at some point) and is no longer able to control the rate of its replication, or determine which cells should be damaged and which should not, then that could be worse than the cancer was to begin with
Anyway, I'll leave the negativity there
as the powerpoint you linked to suggested, nanotech applies to all technologies working at a small scale and not just to "nanobots", and I think these other technologies are more likely to prove effective.
I don't know if the university system is slightly different where you are Mike; all I know is next year I have a series of core modules and a couple of optional modules to fill in the remaining points; I'm studying cell biology, a pharmicological module (I don't remember the exact name) and a module of german next year on top of the core modules